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Holiday Letter

It’s been quite the year over here at the Hungry Household. As evidenced by my lack of posts, we’ve had our hands full with new business adventures, new schools (pre- and grad-) and mainly a new phase of personhood for Ms. Zo-jangles. When Z was wee, I read an article about the difficulty of being an introverted mother. I didn’t really get it. What a newb…

The cute little “I don’t see why people say this is so hard?!? life hasn’t really changed for us” jig is completely UP and in the last few months I’ve moved into my own new stage of being: acceptance. Accepting that slow sunrise mornings and lusciously relaxing evenings will not be the norm for a long, long, kind of unforeseeable time, that some weeks it will feel like the to-do list is refreshing the closer and closer I get to actually checking everything off, and that while so many of these changes are a privilege and fall in the “good life” category, they can still be totally unenjoyable and downright painful.

Last night, in a manic frenzy of what felt like real productivity, I paused and took a deep breath. Refocused and ready to tackle my growing collection of glitter tissue paper I looked down and noticed that my bathroom sink was a total mess. And I thought “I’m done! I’M DONE I’M DONE I’M DONE!!” I guess it just felt like I do 40 million things during the day and that somehow all these things should bank me a little extra: a magically clean sink, a free load of laundry, a few completed case notes, over-night elves who change my oil filter…

And my next thought was “how do people with children do this?? how do they keep up!?! We are NEVER having children.” Zoey let out a mid-sleep “Maaaaaaaaama!” and I remembered. “Right. Ok. Amendment: never having children again.”

Of course, Marc continues to handle each stage without major meltdowns or freak outs. Why are we still surprised? When something unexpected comes along he rolls with it. I’ve tried to tell him he’s not doing it right but he claims to not enjoy spiking his blood pressure on a daily basis. Whatevers. His loss.

So together, our ragtag family is stepping into Christmas. Zo is celebrating the season by hosting a mild case of pink eye. Marc is playing Harry Connick Jr.’s album whenever he gets the chance and happily going along with whatever “family tradition” I force on him that day. As for me, I am continuing to greet the season with a beautiful blend of joy, anger, and nausea.

The other day while waiting for my grandmother to finish lunch, I lurked outside of her dining hall, slowly entering a trance by way of an animatronic Santa set to sing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” on loop. I was really touched as I watched one woman leave the dining hall, pause in front of Santa and pat him on the head during the 13 second break between rounds. “Thank you, Santa.” I teared up. Christmas magic and miracles were real. Peace on earth and feed the world. Let them know it’s Christmastime. No more than two minutes later another woman passed by the hip-shaking Santa and so moved by the Christmas spirit told him to “shut the fuck up.” I am both of these women and I am not sure what that means or how I feel about the situation.

However you ring in the season, I hope you do so with more peace than pink eye. I’ll leave you with our family’s holiday photo. Try not to be jealous.